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Lead Belly was born in Louisiana somewhere around 1888. Living the often violent life of an itinerate musician he found himself twice imprisoned for murder. In 1933 his reputation reached the Lomax family, who, after no small personal tragedy of their own, were traveling the Southern states, recording American work songs, ballads and blues in prisons, penitentiaries, and brothels. Moving around the country in their Ford sedan, John, and his sons John Jr. and Alan, set about recording such artists as Woody Guthrie, Muddy Waters and Jelly Roll Morton. They came across Lead Belly in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, and with their state-of-the-art acetate disc recorder they cut several sides together over the next few months. They soon parted ways; Lead Belly to a fifteen year career as a solo artist, and the Lomax’s continuing their collection of folk musics for the archives of the Library of Congress, and the Works Progress Administration. Despite the difficult relationship between the academic Lomax’s and the hard-living blues artist, it is through this short-lived collaboration that Lead Belly’s work reached a wider audience, of which I count myself a part. My father, following a period of time working in the Caribbean after leaving school in 1964, had become interested in what was still at that time called ‘negro music’. A Presto vinyl record (PRE 689, 1965) containing a selection of Lead Belly’s early Lomax recordings, is one of the earliest artifacts of any kind that I remember from my childhood. For this project, I was interested in engaging with a populist folk tradition, in the hope such a strategy would enable me to think about electroacoustic composition in a new way. The sound material selected, was by necessity, lo-fidelity (A short promotional film made by Lomax and Lead Belly, found on YouTube). The surface noise in the piece, the glitches, and crackles, are inherent to the source material, and are intended to reference the sounds of old blues records, and to address issues of the value of distribution of heavily compressed audio on the internet, thought of here, as a repository of cultural memory. The piece was entirely constructed from Lead Belly’s voice and signature 12-string guitar.

Work Details
A sound composition created for a multi-channel performance/installation which took place over three weeks in the Bargehouse Gallery. Visitors were asked to remove their shoes, and led into a darkened environment by candle light. The single female performer guided visitors through a multisensory immersive environment.

Taking a small audience through an experience and back to its beginning. The fragmented story conjures dreamlike images and situations that enthrall and the audience is magically drawn into the scene.

The piece deals with the themes of refinding childhood, and asking basic questions, inspiring the imagination of the audience. Taking them through a close, intimate, almost personal experience. Coming close, leading the audience around not just by touch, but also sound, smell and taste. A gentle path where they can focus on small things, and perhaps refind a long-forgotten part of themselves.

Being small in a big world. Being safe. Being able to be like a child, just to look and feel and letting experiences occur close to you, not having to act from your own account, just letting things happen.The small details and magical things.

The audience feels their bodies, their ears, their skin, all of their senses again. The piece aims to draw attention to all of their senses. To challenge their imaginations, they are given something to taste and they imagine something, they can smell something and imagine something. It makes them go inward somehow. Finding your senses again. A safe, womb-space. Warm and quiet and dark.

Very personal experience, everyone in the audience will have a personal experience. Leaving the performance with something in their mouth, each one different. A taste with a lable attached to it – and orange with ‘what does this sound like’. Noise and heat and power, an force and fire, the sun, heat again, running, fighting, shouting, strength. (B.Fuchs)

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7000DH – Fukdapolis – Second Theme (2007)

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Overview

The performance focuses on the regenerative aspect of destruction, understood as a process of mutation rather than a form of obliteration. It identifies cultural kitsch as a destructive element within a dematerializing process that creates a noise pool nurturing new patterns of identity and cultural production.

For this performance 7000dirhams has collated a small archive of this kitschified detritus in the form of archetypal melodies, folk and popular music, touristic memorabilia, live radio feeds, to create a rich sludge of source material.

The materials themselves (Super 8mm, souvenir slides and audio recordings), are cut into, burnt, degraded, looped and spliced with a savagery comparable to that embodied by their impoverished representations of a dynamic and living reality.

As such, the work attempts to address the gulf between the image of Athens as presented to the outside world, with that of the everyday, as experienced by Athenians themselves. It therefore presents an environment of plowed structures and splintered forms of Greek culture as filtered by the eyes and ears of two hapless fools from London.

Exhibition & Live entrance: 10 euros. 9pm.
Destroy Athens – Live is a reflection on processes of music & sound production within a visual arts ‘Biennial’ setting. Resisting the notion of ‘art-bands’, Destroy Athens – Live aims instead to describe a phenomenon: that of practitioners operating within different genres (media artists, musicians, film-makes, writers, designers, comic book & soft-toy makers, circuit benders etc) engaging in collaborations, collectives & media experiments that have diverse musical outputs.

From experimental politicised avant-pop commentary, to hip-hop jazz electronica improvisations, to real-time deconstruction & amplification of media, these acts all maintain a commitment to immediacy & non-virtuosity.
The Live part of the public opening engages the Biennial’s theme & purpose (‘Destroy Athens’), by treating Athens as a signal source to be sampled, tweaked with, looped, filtered, commented on and jammed along to. Through the use of on-site found & recorded sound & image, real-time local radio broadcasting interventions, and sonic-surgical media operations, the performers offer a response to context as they find it. Such a grounding for free & open improvisation is a platform for testing their own ignorance of so many aspects of the signal source – cultural, linguistic, historical, while drawing parallels with their own experiences as inhabitants of London, a multi-branded city.

Work Details
Commissioned by Enfield Arts Unit, Enfield Council, North London. A week-long series of workshops in three different primary schools. Working with sculptors and costume designers, a procession performance was devised, based around a simple composed canon, able to be performed by children between the ages of 6 and 11. The event was structured around a tale from Mexican folklore, itself presented to the students as a soundpiece. This extract splices the narrative with the canon, as originally conceived, and the final realization by the school children as performed in a public park.

Proposal
Imagine 3 processions of costumed and masked primary pupils winding their way towards each other. Each procession contains representations one of the following elemental forces – SUN, WIND, or RAIN – each procession will be accompanied by pupils playing self-made instruments from recycled materials.

They converge in a park, within which pupils have created a sculpture trail along which the processions move. Their destination? A central meeting place, based around 3 larger dome sculptures also created by the students.

The three elemental processions gather around the central domes and create a celebratory and joyful storm of music, costume and sculpture.

The event ends in the early evening as dusk falls, with floating candle lanterns being floated along a little stream. As they disperse their beautiful light along the waterway, the pupils, parents, artists, teachers and community groups melt away into the night.

It is our intention to allow pupils, staff and parents from neighbouring schools to work together on an inclusive arts project which benefits the whole community of the Arnos Grove area. Using sound, light, costumes and masks, and instrument- making to transform a public space into a magical wonderland

The artists involved have a great deal of experience in facilitating workshops, working with young people and creating inclusive public events.

This group of artists have worked together on a wide range of projects – with schools and communities both in the U.K. and abroad. We are highly motivated, professional and responsible.

SUBORG

J Milo Taylor – Lead Artist / Instrument Making / Co-ordinator

Suborg’s role will be the instrument making and percussion workshops, and to provide co-ordination and administrative support to the project. Working with primary pupils, instruments will be constructed from recycled materials, teaching the pupils the art of creative thinking, positive problem solving and the fundamentals of rhythm.

The Light and Colour Workshop has great experience in facilitating workshops and installations with schools and community groups throughout the North London area. They are driven to share their joy in their work and to inspire vulnerable and excluded members of the community with an Edmonton-based Arts/learning studio. Their work combines light and sculpture to create beautiful objects accessible to all.

Tammara’s role as lead artist will be one of co-ordination of festival and facilitating the sculpture workshops. Zoë White will be working in conjunction with Tamarra– the sculptural side of their work will be in two strands:

1) Parent/teacher workshop
Introduction to sculptural skills / individual pieces.
Participants will be learning new skills and how to work with new materials (e.g. coloured wires, theatrical gels, tin cans, plastic bottles). Each participant will create their own small sculpture that interacts with one of the central elements. These will become the objects that line the sculptural trail and lead the procession to the central meeting area.

2) Collaborative work on central domes. The focus point of the procession will be three domes based around the elemental themes:

Sun dome – using material such as coloured gels, coloured wire. Imagine a sundial – i.e. the dome as an object that will cast shadows, projects coloured light and movement of light – ever-changing as the earth moves around the sun.

Wind dome – using material with reflective surfaces the smallest breeze will cause this structure to shimmer in the wind. The reflective flickering light marking the movement of the winds circulating within our environment.

Rain dome – by using water and cascading containers water will flow along the outside of this sculpture. Places where the water may rest or be channelled to create a flowing sound that will be calming and magical.

Pupils’ work will be incorporated around a durable and robust aluminium preconstructed frame. (Dimensions 1.5m high, 3m diameter, and 1.5m radius). Each dome can be split into two halves, creating special spaces for pupils to gather for story-telling, future workshops etc.

These structures will be permanent and portable; after the event, the domes will be moved from the public park and one installed in the grounds of each participating school, thus improving each schools environment, and giving them a permanent record of their activities during the project.

OPALA GROUP

Opala Group was founded in 2000 in London by 5 Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design graduates.

Opala works in three distinct areas:

Theatre Performance Development . We create plays, and make theatre workshops for children and grown-ups. This summer we took part in a unique and fantastic week long festival in Morocco, in which Suborg also played a part. We ran mask and costume making workshops and a street procession for the children of the town.

The Film Room is dedicated to promoting young film-makers. Evan Manifattori is a very talented and original film-maker with many outstanding short films to his name. We propose to film the workshops and the actual event, and to provide the involved parties with a high quality document of the project.

We have worked on a number of projects involving children throughout the years, both in the UK and abroad (Morocco, Spain, Yugoslavia, Austria). The workshops are designed to develop creativity and imagination through 3D expression of universal themes such as animals, seasons, fairy tale characters, elements etc.

We work with recycled materials that raise the awareness of environmental issues and help challenge the creativity in children by using known materials in unusual ways, e.g. cardboard boxes, plastic, packaging, wire etc.

Children will also learn about basic artistic techniques and materials through use of paint, brushes, glue, card, paper, scissors, staplers, painting on fabric, finger sawing, costume construction, etc.

At the end of a session each child will have created a mask and a costume of sun, wind or rain, to be worn during the procession. They will also carry flags and banners with the same elemental representations.

At the end of procession and the floating lantern ritual, children can keep their outfits and take them home, or the schools may decide to exhibit them on site.

Project documentation. Evan Manifattori – Film director. Camera.

We also propose to film one session from each school, and provide examples of work done during each of the workshops. The event will also be filmed and edited into a 15-25 minute documentary DVD of the event,

This work will be carried out to the highest standards and provide all the participating schools and community groups with an enduring record of their participation.

Between 2002-2004 I made a series of visits to an artist-run space in the old industrial area of Schöneweide, East Berlin where I presented a number of sound installations and performances. This short film documents some of the activity from that time.

“One of the largest areas of now abandoned industrial production and around Berlin can be found in Berlin-Schoneweide. It forms part of the European industrial cultural heritage. Beautiful monuments create the atmosphere of this part of Berlin. They bear witness to the former industries and determine to this day the lives of those who live there. Most of the warehouses and factories gleaming in yellow brick are situated alongside The River Spree. A road runs through their middle. The workers’ living quarters were erected on one side of this road, the sites for production in the other. When AEG/TRO and KWO closed down in 1996, about 25,000 men and women lost their jobs.”

This local area and its current state
Vacant industrial sites
Position and articulate
Within the chosen concept
Recognised / realised / ignored / overcome / resolved
Diversity of the location
Immmerse
Paths of exploration
The enviroment that helped shape those works
He’s doing artificial things